“Who?”
As I spoke, I realized that the TV was on and tuned, as ever, to The Dick Cavett Show—where some skinny guy with a mop of blond hair, wearing a sequined tuxedo, was nasally belting out a pop ballad:
Well you came and you gave without taking
But I sent you away, ohhh Mandy
And you kissed me and stopped me from shaking
And I need you today, ohhh Mandy…
“Not especially.”
“I like him,” she announced. “Even if this Mandy is kind of a simpleton. But the man himself has a good heart, don’t you think?”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“So you’ll have a drink with me?”
I had to smile. “Why not?”
“Why not, indeed. But first, my dear lawyer, you must relax and stay awhile in my company. Take off your tie and jacket. And let’s put this down, hm?”
Before I understood what was happening, she had begun tugging gently at the briefcase in my hands, trying to take it from me.
“Come now, Mr. Horvath,” she teased. “Work is over for the day. Everything here is for free.”
“I’m sorry,” I said tightly. “It’s just…I have some papers I need to show you.”
Instantly, her face became a tense question.
“What papers?” she demanded.
I looked at her.
“Svetlana, Dick wanted me to show you some documents.”
“Which documents?”
“They concern Josef.”
“My Josef?”
“Yes.”
Now her eyes—those eyes with their untamable streaks of yellow—appeared lacquered with suspicion in the room’s light.
“So after all, Peter, this was why you came to my house tonight,” she concluded quietly. “To show me documents.”
“Yes.”
“Very well. So show them to me.”
Having stepped into this blind alleyway, I didn’t see what else I could do. I opened my briefcase, removed the papers, and handed them to her.
“They’re copies,” I explained, as if that made a difference.
She read them as I had—one at a time, in order.
And I watched as an understanding of the situation hit her in stages, like a series of small, invisibly landed blows. Until, at last, her body was bent at the waist in a mother’s anguish.
“I will never see my son again.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. I know.” She moaned softly. “Oh, my Josef. My son.”
Her grief, which I had delivered to her, was awful to witness. I had no idea how to comfort her.
“Let me hold you.”
But as I held her, I could feel her begin to change. Like water freezing to ice, she turned rigid and cold, bristling with suspicion and rage—until, without a word having passed between us, it was clear to me that, just as I’d always dreaded, I was now her enemy.
I let her go. “Svetlana…”
“No,” she snapped. “You did this, Peter—you and that spy Dick Thompson.”
“Svetlana, that’s not true.”
“It is true.”
“You’re upset. I understand, but you have to believe me, it isn’t what you think.”
“What I think?” She practically spit at me. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think my son wanted to come to me here in America. After everything I did to him, leaving him and his sister in Russia, he wanted to come. But you and your spy friend, you sons of bitches, decided this story cannot be true—no, it must be the fucking KGB that told my son to ask for me. So you slam the door on him for good. And now he’ll never come. Never! I will never see him again in my life.”
“Things can change.”
“Not this. These things will never change. You have always known it. You and the spy.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I read the fucking documents, Peter! I’m not an idiot. I know proof when I see it.”
“Calm down and please just listen to me.”
“I have listened. My mistake. You and your fucking CIA.”
“Goddamnit, you know who I am. I’m not the CIA.”
“No?”
“Svetlana—”
“No more.”
“No more what?”
“Get out of my house.”
“Svetlana, listen to me—”
“I said get out of my house, damn you—you and your fucking lies!”
She hurled the CIA documents in my face: I felt a nick on my cheek, and watched the papers flutter helplessly to the floor.
* * *
—
And I tell you, whoever you are, that as in a nightmare, I could not believe what was happening. That still to this day, forty years later, I am left with the indelible image of myself getting down on my knees to retrieve those spilled pages from her floor, my tears frozen solid behind my eyes and my voice shamefully murmuring, “I’m sorry, Svetlana, I’m so sorry, but I can’t leave these here.”
EDITOR’S NOTE
“What the hell did you say to her?” Dick Thompson barked in my ear three days later, the moment I picked up the phone in my office.
“Beverly, I’ve got it.” I heard the click as my secretary switched off the line. “Nothing,” I told Dick bitterly. “I did what you asked me to do. I showed her the documents.”
“Well, she’s gone.”
“What do you mean she’s gone?”
“I mean, Peter, her house is empty. Not a stick of furniture left. And there’s a For Sale sign on the lawn. And we don’t have a fucking clue where in the world she’s taken her son, or what she plans to do.”
Thinking I was about to be sick then, I hung up before he could say any more.
LETTER
14 October 1975
Oceanside, CA
Dear Peter,
I understand if you may not wish to hear from me. I am very sorry that I took Yasha and disappeared so abruptly from Princeton after I threw you out, and that you have not heard from me until now. I have been in a state of almost perpetual confusion, with no real sense of clarity to offer you, which has made me too ashamed to write.
I have not been healthy in my mind, exactly. But I am trying.
Here is what I wish to say, my dearest, if you will listen:
Though I’m gone, I do not forget you. I can never forget you. What I cannot seem to do is love you well enough to stop running.
Your loving
Svetlana
LETTER
17 December 1975
Carlsbad, CA
Dear Peter,
Merry happy Christmas—or what you and Martha and not-so-little Jean make of non-Jewish holidays these days, I myself am not so clear on this point anymore, or anything else. Here in Paradise, on the other hand, where Mr. Santa Claus wears sunglasses and surfing shorts, we are in states of perpetual ennui. So I am told. And that is the polite word.
California is cheaper than New Jersey, but not so cheap that money grows rather than disappears. I would give you our latest address and hope you visit but we are moving again soon. Because it’s on the ground floor this apartment is gloomy and too open to invasive neighbors who are not always what they say. However, one of my nice women at Christian Science church here told me about this apartment on the other side of town that could be better for us. I will go tomorrow and look. You will sniff at this idea of Christian Science, Peter—I can hear you, sniff-sniff—and I will not claim I believe all they preach or do, but there is structure to their rules and regulations that I find helpful with my drinking too much and even, let me say, some days I find it almost consoling. Some form and structure I mean in this freewheeling universe of California sun. On this boundless earth we must fi
nd help where each of us can, do you not agree? I have removed the vodka from the glove box of my Dodge. I am no longer waking myself at night with helpless questionings, spoken aloud, to my dear nurse, Alexandra Andreevna, about when my mother is going to come home to me and whether she was still bleeding after she was dead. I am trying not to torture myself too much with thoughts about how one day on the banks of the Ganges I managed to convince my brain that to leave Josef and Katya in Moscow was to free them—what a martyr I thought I was—when in fact I might as well have locked them away in Lubyanka with my own hands.
No, for my mental health, I must try to give time now only to those thoughts of daily motherhood that prove me trustworthy in my own home. Otherwise how can I be alone with Yasha, this innocent child who needs me most urgently? And he with me? How can he rely on me to do what is right and good? What will we do?
I tell you, my dearest Peter, and only you, that every day I fear they will come and take him away from me. Every single day. And every single day, sometime or else, a part of me believes it would be better for him if they did.
Your loving
Svetlana
EDITOR’S NOTE
Two days before Christmas, 1975: I caught the last train from the city bearing late-found gifts for Martha and Jean. Home past ten, I tucked the Bergdorf’s bag in the foyer closet with my coat and scarf, and entered the kitchen, expecting to find, as ever, a single place setting and a meatloaf sandwich.
“Sit down, Peter,” Martha said in a quiet, firm voice.
On the table before her was a letter and a half-torn envelope. From two yards away, instantly, I recognized Svetlana’s handwriting.
I cleared my throat. “Martha…”
“Do you honestly think, Peter,” she interrupted me, “that I don’t know?”
She was dressed as though we’d planned an evening at home together—black slacks and brown cashmere sweater, proper heels—but her hair, always carefully arranged, had not been brushed, and her eyes were red.
“You always wanted to be a hero,” she said. “I know that, even if you don’t. You probably never thought you’d get the chance. Always so good and quiet. The clever stoic. Afraid to get sent out of the classroom for saying the wrong thing. You’ve always hated that about yourself. And here she comes as if on cue, the tyrant’s daughter, the little Slavic princess making her dash for freedom, in need of a trusted counselor. I mean it’s almost like you invented her. Sexy. Outspoken. Demanding. Just crazy enough to make you feel needed and important. The kind of gross egotism that for a little while, if you’re blind, might get mistaken for courage.”
“Martha…”
Martha raised a hand. “I’m not finished. You think she can love you back the way you want to be loved? Think there’s room in that mountainous ego of hers for you to even get a toehold? You’re not used to asking much for yourself. You’re not very good at it. And you’re going to start now, in middle age? Is she even listening? Does she even give a damn?”
“I don’t know.”
“What a hero you are, Peter. What a man.”
Martha got to her feet.
“I don’t ever intend to talk about this again. Just don’t ever think—not for one minute—that I don’t know who you are and why you want her. Now I’m going to bed.”
LETTER
2 March 1976
La Jolla, CA
Dear Peter,
You are the only one I can tell. This morning in our small apartment I lost control of myself and—how can I write this?—I slapped my Yasha across his face.
The sound of the blow, his awful cry—not just the pain but such shock at my betrayal—the hideous red welt in the shape of my own hand that instantly appeared on his blameless skin…I was so horrified at what I’d done that I ran from the building. Yes, I left my five-year-old son alone. I got in my car and drove away. I tell you, Peter, I should be locked up. I drove to the beach, the very edge of this country, where the road ends in a parking lot by the Pacific Ocean. And there for nearly an hour, while my son faced oblivion, I did nothing but sit on the hood of my car and hug myself, the tide coming in, the waves growing bigger and louder, shuddering the coastline in this land of earthquakes and fault lines, this place where, when Yasha and I first arrived, the scent of the trees—the pine, the eucalyptus, the lemon, the orange—made me remember, oh, God how I remembered, the Black Sea of my childhood.
Yasha was watching cartoons on TV when I returned. It almost seemed he hadn’t noticed. But when I got on my knees and embraced him, sobbing, he began to cry so hard I thought he would never stop.
I miss you, my Peter. But please understand, I could not bear to have you see me like this.
Your loving
Svetlana
1983: ENGLAND
16 October
Cambridge
They advise me that if I am going to write anything serious now, it ought to be in Russian, not English. That Russian is the door to my “authentic” voice and therefore most likely to produce the “authentic” me in any “authentic” literary work that I, Lana Evans (not the name they’re interested in), might write. The great Latvian-born “Sir” Isaiah Berlin tells me this, when he thinks to tell me anything anymore, he has been so sly with his esteemed intellectual presence ever since I came to this country, certainly more fox than hedgehog. The ostensible publisher of my next book—not a single word of which has yet been written in either Russian or English—Hugo Brunner, also tells me this, as a way, he believes, of encouraging me to new depths of expression with perhaps, though not necessarily, the promise of a book advance at the end of it.
But neither of these men nor any of the others—none—understands my pain when I write Russian, my father’s language; or for that matter the guilt which burns within me when I choose not to write Russian, the language of the last words my mother ever spoke to me, whatever they were, God help me I wish I could remember; or even, as with these most recent years, which have seen me turn fifty and older, when I have chosen to write no language of any kind, to myself or others.
It was my Russian voice I could not stand anymore and chronically attempted to abandon, like some trunk in an Edgar Allan Poe story filled with poisoned memories, which I tried to lose at every station of my long wayward journey, only to find upon opening the door of my new house in a new town (whichever new house in whichever new town, there have been so many in Arizona, California, New Jersey) that, lo, the trunk was there. Indeed, sometimes it was the only thing there, waiting for me, having mysteriously arrived in advance, and at the expense, of every other memory and language I ever possessed.
And so, here in my little attic flat with the perpetual hot water problem on the edge of Cambridge University, founded in the year 1209, which my dear Akhmatova never saw, I open this notebook and begin again. Continue again. In my own language, this Russian I brought with me from my native sadness.
My American son, on the other hand, not even twelve and currently being educated thanks to a most generous scholarship by the Quakers at the Friends’ School in the medieval market town of Saffron Walden, England, Great Britain, speaks and writes only in English.
Long live my unsilent son.
30 October
My beloved Dodge gone forever (last-ditch sale price of $350 hard cash handed to me on the eve of our departure to England by an unsavory fellow wearing a track suit and half-gold dentures, but no matter), I take the train to Essex, and from there a local bus to Saffron Walden to pick up Yasha for his half-term holiday. The Friends’ School, founded 1702, one of those formidable brick piles the English once did so well, with clean flat quadrants of lawn greening the spaces in between the piles. In this case, however, I am pleased to find the architectural certainties of Western empire leavened by a warm Quaker humility that, as we Americans like to say, takes all comers. To think of my son sittin
g in Silent Meeting each morning, surrounded I hope by new mates while enveloped simultaneously by the weight of this academic history on the one hand and these welcoming, peace-loving Quaker arms on the other, makes me feel again that probably I have made the proper choice in bringing him to this country, where he might receive the sort of education that a free citizen of the thinking world must and should have if he is to make something of himself in these catastrophic times.
Before meeting Yasha in his dormitory, I stop by the administration building for a prearranged chat with the Head of School. Mrs. Gwendolyn Channing greets me dressed all in comforting Quaker woolens. The point of this meeting to rededicate the personal promise she made me upon my application to the school (and again upon their granting Yasha the generous scholarship) that under no circumstances will my son be exposed to the knowledge (which up to now I have rigorously kept from him) of his grandfather’s infamous name. He will, in short, be protected from unwanted—which is to say, any—publicity from the world outside these peaceable walls.
Mrs. Channing assures me that all is well. There was a rather challenging first month, during which, out of a natural state of anxiety at finding himself thrust into a foreign situation, Jacob was perhaps overemphasizing certain, shall we say, American aspects of his personality, but he now seems to be settling in quite happily and making a number of new friends.
One such friend, presumably, is the quiet Indian boy sitting with Yasha on the front steps of the dormitory building as I approach. My son—my height now, with evidence of Sid’s long arms and stretched legs and a healthy mop of dark hair curling over forehead and ears—offers me a lanky hug and mumbled Hi, Mom (or is it Mum I hear in some sort of borrowed Cockney mush?), followed by an introduction to his new chum Rog, whose real name, I learn once I have installed the three of us at a table in the Old English Gentleman pub in town for steak-and-kidney pies and boiled peas on toast, is really Rajesh. Rog’s parents are back in Bombay, it seems, and will not be over until Christmas. I would invite him to spend the break with us in Cambridge if we had room, but we don’t, and if we did not live in an attic, as we do, and if we did not have cold winds already blowing through the “ventilation” holes behind our gas stove, and so forth. After my pint of brown ale I tell young Rajesh, who is as short as my son is tall, that I had an Indian friend once, more than a friend actually, a husband in fact, even if bloody Kosygin and his people refused to acknowledge our relationship in its true form and only reluctantly and for their own political calculations allowed me permission to travel, after dear Brajesh’s death, to his homeland so that, along with his enormous grieving family, I might pour my dear companion’s ashes back into the river of his birth. Yes, Rajesh can’t imagine it, but I had gone to India once, and a heart-wrenching and momentous journey it turned out to be.
The Red Daughter Page 20